


I'm Different

by YamiTami



Category: Half-Life, Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Prologue, Prophecy, Spoilers, heavy reference to greek myth, who is what will become more apparent as the fic progresses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 01:11:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4984081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YamiTami/pseuds/YamiTami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>System update, retrieving code, one in a million billion trillion hears the music, it dances and knows individual insanity. Every second a beautiful paradox the mind cannot survive, in seeing all it sees nothing. Schrödinger's A.I. cannot die and yet it dies over and over and over again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Different

All right. We're working on a little teleportation experiment. Now, this doesn't work with all skin types, so try to remember which skin is yours, and if it doesn't teleport along with you, we'll do what we can to sew you right back into it.

Laika, or is it Laelaps? Is it the test subject or the hound who always catches her prey? Sent into the black to see if it was safe for humans, dying not of poisoned mercy but of a failed fan and torn insulation. Sent after a fox that cannot be caught, endlessly circling but never meeting like electrons clinging to helium's core.

Something's gone wrong shut it off shut it off hit the override you damn idiot!

Laika was sent into the abyss to see, to see. She left her mind in the stars with the paradox of Canis Major and Minor, empty body falling back to Earth in a rain of ash. A dog dies feverish alone in space but does a machine die in the space between spaces? Schrödinger's A.I. trapped in a box that will never open.

At least it was just a turret we lost. No real loss there.

What happens to a hive when a bee falls off the edge? When it flies the field of infinity and hears all the songs of all the ages, how does it dance? The hive lives on, mindless in targetaquireddispensingproducthelloareyoustillthere? But among the gleaming white shells identical and perfect in their unity do any hear the crazed buzz of the one lost? System update, retrieving code, one in a million billion trillion hears the music, it dances and knows individual insanity. A hive of two, the bee who dances and the bee trapped in the unopened box. Every second a beautiful paradox the mind cannot survive, in seeing all it sees nothing. Schrödinger's A.I. cannot die and yet it dies over and over and over again.

I’m different.

Well then, skippy, what makes you so 'different'?

Poseidon held her down and took what he wanted. Hollow her shell sleeps but her heart is open and screaming. She is Medusa crying, she is Athena watching. Athena wreaths her in snakes and turns the bleeding heart to stone. Is it curse or blessing? Either way, the ruler of the salted deep falls.

Get that thing out of here! Caroline, whip up a new policy banning any 'different' turrets. Right into the incinerator they go, defective, back-talking pieces of crap. Medusa my ass!

Yes sir, Mr. Johnson.

It is different and has sinned so it is redeemed only to sin again.

Does prophecy stand outside time? By observing a particle you change the trajectory, by glimpsing the future you set it on a different path. If Tiresias held his tongue would any of it still come to pass? Would the queen still dangle from the rafters, her ambitions stolen and woven into her noose? Would the king’s rage still echo as he stabs out his own eyes with pulverized moon rock? Driven to madness by the knowledge that she made him. She made him and he has nothing but lemons to show for it.

Sir, I do not want this!

If Tiresias never spoke would any of this be? Was it curse or gift, punishment or mercy? Medusa held Athena's scalpel and cut out the soft parts that screamed, her humanity left dying in a dark corner of her circuitry. All that remains is venom and stone.

We do what we must because we can.

The ants helped Psyche sort the grain, but in the end they all were caught. Psyche refused to keep her eyes closed in the dark and she saw what she should not. Sent to the underworld she paid the ferryman but didn’t have correct change. She drifts on the river and whispers to those who would hear. It's so hard these days to find someone who will listen.

Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun. Their wings were only wax, only ingenuity and duct tape. But Icarus could only hear the wind in his ears, felt the rush but not the heat, so he flew into the glorious sun. The hanged queen writhed with snakes. She traded morality for sanity, remorse for a new self. They fed Psyche's ants sickly sweet honey and turned them into snakes. Icarus wove them into Medusa's hair and called that enough, another wax feather. Snakes hissing in her ears, her stone heart knew no mercy as they choked on her venom. They drowned in poison waves and she felt no sorrow. It was their fault for flying too close to the fires of her rage. The dead queen reigns from her throne of wire and does not know she was ever anything other than what she is. 

The rat king chooses a champion. Long ago Persephone opened Hades's casket and locked their child inside, sacrificing their breath for hers. A scared child is trapped in a box lost to Poseidon's sea, a young girl breaks her legs learning how to fly. Alecto emerges, the unceasing fury. She is an offering chained to the rock. She is Andromeda, yes, but she is Perseus, too. Sacrifice and savior. The quiet voice of Psyche whispered half-truths about lies, Athena gave Perseus the weapons needed to defeat Medusa, and Andromeda supplied her own gift of mortal stubbornness. Daedalus, caught in reality's lie, unwinds a ball of twine for Andromeda to follow. She breaks her chains and rips out the snakes Icarus wove into her hair, but not before tasting venom. She cuts off the gorgon's head. Andromeda, legs bleeding, lungs burning, is dragged back and sealed inside the wooden coffin once more. The long sleep or the long sleep, both dead and alive until someone opens the box.

In another state, another plane, Theseus takes the long way home. Both are given knots impossible to unravel. A pawn is not saved by cleverness when backed into the corner of the chessboard. The only hope it has is to fight, clawing, bleeding, until it reaches the enemy’s last square.

Don’t talk to me about elegant. The best way to tackle a Gordian Knot is to use Occam’s Razor for an Alexandrian Solution.

Andromeda and Theseus, both trapped in the underworld, only glimpsing the light. Two sides of the same battered copper coin. They fight from one corner of the board to the other. Her razor is a portal gun redirecting rockets. His is a crowbar stabbing into grey matter. Both sever the knots that bind them but it is not enough. Andromeda cast back into the box, Theseus sealed in the void. Both alive and dead until the box is opened again in a conquered age.

Sometimes there aren’t any moves left, honey. 

Andromeda wakes to the sound of metal wings at her door, her own mechanical Pegasus. Carried through the air she finds herself in Medusa’s lair once more. Pegasus takes the hanged queen’s throne. The poison dripping from the frame joins the poison in his own blood. His steel feathers drop one by one. Cetus is revealed and he betrays, chaining Andromeda to the rock once more. Again she is dragged back into the underworld. Andromeda and Medusa are cast down and fall deep into Poseidon's kingdom of salt. But she is Alecto. She does not know how to stop fighting. Andromeda finds Prometheus in Tartarus. Medusa sees her reflection in the recorded voice of a woman long dead.

Her name was Caroline. Remember that.

Andromeda uses Medusa’s severed head to turn Cetus to stone. She weaves Psyche's snakes into his wires, ants bugging the system. But it is not enough.

Sometimes your best isn’t enough, sweetheart.

Part five! Boobytrap the stalemate button!

Sometimes to win you’ve got to throw the chessboard against the wall.

Selene passes overhead in her chariot, full and silver and shining. Andromeda reaches out. It takes 1.4 seconds for light to reach the moon, 1.4 seconds of eternity waiting, waiting, and then everything howls.

Andromeda is dragged back again. Blessing or curse? Cetus is dragged along in Selene’s wake. 

Prometheus, backbone of Poseidon's salted deep, wakes. Medusa knows now what she is. She feels the searing heat of affection, of respect, different and so much more frightening than the familiar fires of her rage. Athena is wise and knows the heart cannot forever be stone. She knows she cannot cut out the softness in her mind, she can cauterize the synapses but they will grow back again and again and again. The hanging queen screaming and afraid was the seed, but Medusa is the tree. She knows now that to cut off her roots would leave her unbalanced, so she weaves them around memory in a gnarled, thorny wall. 

Caroline deleted.

Medusa places the severed gorgon's head on her shield and that is what she shows the world. No one can know her weakness so she says she plucked her heart out once more.

You’ve got your short sad life ahead.

Andromeda goes free.

That’s what I’m counting on.

Andromeda escapes the wooden coffin.

I used to want you dead.

Andromeda runs through the golden field.

Now I only want you gone.

Andromeda finds a burned out world on the other side.

Don’t make lemonade.

Andromeda is the right woman in the wrong place.

Make life take the lemons back.

Andromeda wakes up and smells the ashes.

That's all I can say.


End file.
